Four multi-talented Hawaiian artists will receive well-deserved recognition for their contributions to Hawaii’s music and recording industry on Sunday when the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts presents the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Japanese Cultural Center in Mo‘ili‘ili.

All four of this year’s honorees are entertainers: Hawaiian music veteran Momi Bee Kahawaiola‘a, 92; “Brother Noland” Conjugacion, 61, who introduced a new sound to local music with “Coconut Girl” in 1983; Jon Osorio, 68, member of the Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winning duo Jon & Randy in the early 1980s, currently dean of the Hawai‘inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawai‘i; and Hoku Award-winning Hawaiian language songwriter, recording artist and kumu hula Kawaikapuaokalani Hewett, 65.

The festivities include performances by the honorees or their representatives.

Also being honored on Sunday are the recipients of the 2019 Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Legacy Awards: musician and recording industry executive Michael Cord and chanter and hula dancer ‘Iolani Luahine. The Krash Kealoha Industry Award recipient is Tihati Productions.

Momi Bee Kahawaiola‘a — musician, vocalist, recording artist

She was born Carol Momi Bee, grew up in Honolulu, and started singing at the age of 12 with her sisters, Henrietta and Esther — they performed as the Bee Sisters.

The Bee Sisters got their big break in 1950 when Johnny Almeida, host of a popular Hawaiian music radio show and talent scout for 49th State Hawaii Records, picked them to record Jack Owens’ recently-written hapa haole hit, “Hukilau.”

“We played on the radio once a week with Johnny Almeida. Somebody gave him that song and he said ‘Why don’t you girls do it?” Kahawaiola‘a said on Oct. 16. “It took about three tries to get all of us together to cut it, but when they got us together it took just one take. We were used to singing together, me and my sisters. It was our very first recording — and our only recording.”

“The first time I heard it on the radio I was with my husband,” she recalled. “We were going to Hilo, and I said ‘Tony, that’s me and my sisters.’ It was beautiful. I loved it.”

The Bee Sisters eventually disbanded, but Kahawaiola‘a continued on. She performed in nightclubs and showrooms across Hawaii, in Japan and Saipan and Canada, on cruise ships, and on the US mainland.

In 1993 she opened what would be a 23-year engagement at the Hawaiian Regent Hotel (later rebranded as the Mariott Waikiki) with her aunt, Genoa Keawe, and Violet Pahu Lilikoi. When Lilikoi retired she was replaced by Keawe’s oldest son, Gary Aiko; the group also added steel guitarist Alan Akaka and Keawe’s granddaughter, Pomaika‘i Keawe Lyman.

With that long-running engagement Kahawaiola‘a’s career came almost full circle.

“My inspiration when I started singing was mainly my auntie Genoa Keawe,” Kahawaiola‘a said. “She was my mother’s younger sister, and she was a beautiful singer. She’s always smiling (when she sang) and had a beautiful personality. Everybody just loved her singing, and her smiling all the time.”

“Brother Noland” Conjugacion — musician, vocalist, songwriter, recording artist, teacher

Ask anyone who knows anything about Hawaii’s music to name a Brother Noland song and they’re likely to say “Coconut Girl,” the breakout song from his 1983 album, “Pacific Bad Boy.” The song combined a catchy Afro-Caribbean rhythm with insights on cultural alienation, changing values and the impact of American culture on traditional island values.

“When I heard the final mix I was absolutely, ‘I don’t know,’” Conjugacion said on Oct. 16, looking back on the adventures in his career during a visit to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser newsroom. “At that time everyone thought maybe ‘Little Lullaby’ would be the hit, but (“Coconut Girl”) exploded. It’s so interesting how it has become a theme song in so many instances.”

Although “Pacific Bad Boy” was the album that took him into the musical mainstream, he had already earned some underground buzz with songs from his two previous indie-label albums. There was “Look What They’ve Done,”a song decrying congestion and overbuilding in Waikiki that came to the conclusion “No more Hawaiian style”; it was removed from a Honolulu radio station playlist in the ’80s, after visitor industry representatives complained. And there was “Pua Lane,” which could have been about a girl named Pua Lane — except that there was a street next to Mayor Wright Housing, named Pua Lane.

“My influences, for sure, are the boys in the ’hood when I grew up on Pua Lane. That was like the family. I think they call it ‘gangs’ now, but back in the day that was our family,” Conjugacion said. “I was always the guy with the guitar, and pretty soon I got everybody else to get a guitar and we had our own little ‘Willie and the Poor Boys” street corner band. And then I met Kaipo (Daniels) who is my hanai brother, and he told me ‘You got to get over the hump (of being shy) and play for the people.’”

Conjugacion won his first Hoku Awards with his next album, “Native News,” in 1986. His recordings in following years reaffirmed his commitment to Hawaiian music as well as his interest in the music of other cultures.

Asked to pick some of his career highlights as a performer, Conjugacion mentioned experiences outside Hawaii: “Visiting the 9/11 Memorial in New York, and playing at the United Nations for the Hokule‘a and the Hikianalia a couple of years ago. Two (others) that really made a great impact on me was playing at a celebration of life for an Army colonel, a local boy, at Arlington Cemetery, and playing at the 2011 Tsunami Relief Effort in Japan.”

Jon Osorio — musician, vocalist, songwriter, recording artist, educator

Weeks ago, Jon Osorio, dean of the Hawai‘inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the the University of Hawaii-Manoa, appeared on stage playing a guitar and singing during the staging of “Au‘a ‘Ia: Holding On, ”a university production about the history of Hawaiian resistance in the islands. Some younger audience members may have missed the kaona (hidden meaning) of the song, included in a scene referencing the protests against U.S. bombing practice on Kaho‘olawe: It fit because it was a requiem for Hawaiian activist George Helm, who died early into the multi-year struggle to end the bombing. Osorio fit because he had co-written the song with the late Randy Borden, with whom he performed as Jon & Randy.

“I had no idea that people would still be remembering it,” 39 years later, Osorio said, in an Oct. 16 interview. “We weren’t that close to either that movement or to George, although we knew him as another musician, but I think that song is the reason that allowed me to act in the show. … Being there with all those young people, and having them imagine that they were part of that movement in the 1970s was really moving to us.”

Osorio and Borden recorded their first album as J&R Inc., and became Jon & Randy when they switched record labels.

Their first album as Jon & Randy was “Hawaiian Eyes” — the album’s title song, which they had also co-written, won the Hoku Award for song of the year. Also on the album was “Hawaiian Soul.”

Borden’s decision to go to the mainland broke up the act. Osorio returned to college, earned a Ph.D and began a career in education that brought him to his current job — and that cameo role at Kennedy Theatre.

“Both the musical career and my career as an educator are really the same thing,” Osorio said. “When I got into music (in the 1970s) it was because there were things Hawaiians wanted to communicate to the rest of the people here — the need to preserve what we had, to look at the future carefully and cautiously, to cherish those things that were left us by our kupuna, and it’s in our music.

“That’s what many of the musicians of that era are still doing. They’re very much involved in educating the public about that, about the spirit in that culture that ties us to this land.’”

Kawaikapuaokalani Hewett — vocalist, songwriter, recording artist, kumu hula, cultural practitioner

Kawaikapuaokalani Hewett is one of the few kumu hula who has a prolific parallel career as a songwriter and recording artist. Hewett was raised by his mother’s parents and grew up a native speaker. He continued his cultural immersion after high school — his teachers included Emma Defries, ‘Iolani Luahine, Marion Haleokeawe Defries Espinal, Kekau‘ilani Kalama and Mae Lobenstein. He founded Kuhai Halau O Kawaikapuokalani Pa ‘Olapa Kahiko in 1978.

“My foundation has always been traditional because I had some very traditional teachers, but I think having been schooled through that foundation, and having that foundation as my platform, that allowed me to be very creative in the things that I did, whether it was in my hula performances or writing music,” Hewett said, in an interview on Oct. 23. “In everything I’ve been involved with, I’ve taken that foundation with me.”

“People like auntie Genoa Keawe and uncle George Na‘ope, auntie Emma Defries — there are so many of them who took responsibility for me as a young person, as a young entertainer in Hawaii, someone who wanted to learn hula. I have to give them all my love, my aloha and appreciation, because I know that it if was not for them I wouldn’t be here.”

When Hewett received his first Hoku Award in 1981, it was in the prestigious Haku Mele category (“best newly written Hawaiian-language song”) for “Ka Wai Lehua ‘A‘ala Honua,” recorded by the Brothers Cazimero on album “Waikiki, My Castle By The Sea.”

He won his first Hoku as a recording artist the following year; his debut single, “Pua Melia” b/w “Halalu,” won Most Promising Artist of the Year.

Thirty-seven years later, Hewett’s collection includes two additional awards for Haku Mele, two for song of the year, one for traditional Hawaiian album of the Year and one for liner notes. He received the Moe Keale “Aloha Is” Award for Community Service in 2018.

“My greatest contribution to Hawaii is that I have raised good children,” Hewett said; he’s the father of six. “I really am thankful for that. Being raised in a family with music and hula, that was forever a part of our lives — from the time I was a little child, and it continues on today. My children are reflections of me, and who could ask for anything more? I have to say that, because they inspired my songwriting, they inspired my hula, they inspired everything that I’ve become today.”

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HAWAI‘I ACADEMY OF RECORDING ARTS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

Honoring “Brother Noland” Conjugacion, Kawaikapuaokalani Hewett, Momi Bee Kahawaiola‘a and Jon Osorio. Legacy Awards to Michael Cord and ‘Iolani Luahine. Krash Kealoha Industry Award to Tihati Productions.

>> Where: Manoa Grand Ballroom Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i

>> When: 10 a.m. Sunday

>> Cost: $77.50

>> Info: nahokuhanohano.org or 593-9424

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LEGACY, KRASH KEALOHA AWARDS

Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Legacy Award

>> Michael Cord (1949-2015) — musician, recording artist, record producer, record company executive

Michael Cord came to Hawaii in 1968 and made a name for himself as the bass player in two rock bands, the Sun & the Moon and Golden Throat. Cord produced Golden Throat’s self-titled debut album and then worked with two other Golden Throat members, Nohelani Cypriano and Dennis Graue, in launching Cypriano as a solo artist. Cypriano’s debut recording, a 45 rpm vinyl EP, was also the first release for Cord’s record label, HanaOla Records.

Cord was living in California in the 1980s when he noticed that many old-time Hawaiian record labels had gone out of business and their releases were out of print. In 1991 he began leasing the rights to those old recordings and digitally restoring them for reissue. Among the record labels Cord brought back to life were Bell, 49th State Hawaii, Mele, Trim, Tradewinds and Gold Coin. He also released previously unissued recordings by Cecilio & Kapono, Pua Almeida and Pauline Kekahuna.

>> ‘Iolani Luahine (1915-1978) — dancer, chanter, kumu hula

Born Harriet Lanihau Makekau and raised by her great aunt, Julia Keahi Luahine, ‘Iolani Luahine began learning traditional Hawaiian chanting and hula at the age 4. In the decades that followed she became revered for her mesmerizing presence and spellbinding artistry as a dancer and chanter. Luahine opened a hula studio in her home on Queen Street in 1946 and shared the traditional oral heritage of hula kahiko (ancient hula) with students of all ages. In 1969 she hosted a meeting of kumu hula to discuss and make plans for the preservation and perpetuation of hula kahiko and related elements of traditional Hawaiian culture.

Luahine appeared in several television programs and was the subject of three documentary films. She also made several recordings for Waikiki Records. One of them, “Aia la ‘o Pele,” was digitally remastered and reissued by Michael Cord in 2010.

Krash Kealoha Industry Award

>> Tihati Productions is celebrating its 50th anniversary presenting Polynesian revues and other visitor-oriented entertainment in Hawaii. The Krash Kealoha Aloha Industry Award honors Tihati’s contributions to Hawaii’s music and entertainment industries.